Working with Telecom Italia
Telecom Italia and Visa Europe have signed a strategic agreement to boost the payment for goods and services using a wide range of the most popular mobile handsets.
Under the terms of the agreement the two companies will make mobile payments services available to the over 31 million TIM customers across Italy, in support of Visa’s vision to reduce the use of cash at the point of sale.
The new service, building on successful pilots carried out in the Milan area in 2012, will allow consumers to use selected smartphones to make contactless transactions at enabled point of sale terminals across Europe. TIM will also be installing contactless terminals in their stores across Italy.
TIM and Visa will also launch services supporting secure, quick and convenient P2P payments, to enable money transfer from smartphones to other people, and e-commerce payments, allowing customers to shop online with their mobile phones.
The TIM-branded Visa card, designed in partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo, will be made available to TIM customers on smartphones equipped with NFC technology, with a launch expected in 2014. The service will be developed with the same industry-leading security standards used for all Visa contactless payments and supported by the security inherent in TIM’s SIM card and supporting infrastructure.
The Visa contactless payments service will be the core of the TIM-branded “mobile wallet”, an open digital wallet created by TIM to host and support services from a wide range of partners including financial institutions, retailers, transport and public utility companies.
Contactless payments allow consumers to make easy everyday payments under EUR25 simply by tapping their smartphone on the dedicated contactless POS terminal, allowing consumers to pay for bus and underground tickets, newspapers, books, magazines or coffee, among other things. Purchases above EUR25 can be enabled contactless simply by using a passcode which can be inserted directly on the mobile phone.
Whitepapers
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